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Considering Alexander Dugin's Esoteric Economic Thinking

Preprint · January 2021

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.19663.41123

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 Considering Alexander Dugin’s Esoteric Economic Thinking
John Cody Mosbey
January 2021

This paper briefly examines the geopolitical and economic mindset of Alexander Dugin, a contemporary
Russian geopolitical theologian. Dugin has enjoyed increasing notoriety in the West during the last decade
of the twentieth century and the first two of the twenty-first. Dugin is a controversial player who has posited
an alternative political theory with economic components. Dugin opposes the prevailing Western Liberal
Democratic model. I highlight the decidedly esoteric nature of Dugin’s ideology to demonstrate his non-
Western thinking with the caution that, despite largely denied metaphysical inputs in the Western forum,
his potential impact should not be dismissed.

INTRODUCTION

Philosophy was part of the luggage that the Renaissance packed for its rapid journey away from the
Middle Ages. Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) and Francis Bacon (1561-1626), two of but many,
discussed the merits of government in terms of the Middle Age ideas of sacred and profane. As
Renaissance positions emerged and solidified, Church, State, alchemy, and science relationships were
increasingly questioned. The result was, over time and relative to the secular, metaphysical aspects and
conceptions were diminished. Tightly bound to governmental philosophy is the economic program
selected as an accomplice. Thus, economic philosophy accompanied its governmental sibling into
emerging modernity.
After quite a few false starts in life, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) gained traction with his
political and economic opinions prior to the French Revolution. The Jacobins unabashedly adopted and
promoted the self-aggrandizing profane philosophy of Rousseau. Regardless of – perhaps even because of
– the ascendency of the profane over the sacred, the near-term result of the entire Jacobin experiment was
political cannibalism. Despite the obvious success, as political and economic reality, of the American
Revolution’s less radical development, compared to the French, the latter’s dogma of profane dominance
remains firmly embedded in the Western psyche to this day. Sacred remnants are still found, however.
Alexander Dugin is a rather startling contemporary example.
Dugin promotes his Fourth Political Theory as the desirable alternative to the liberalism of
postmodernity. He states that, in modernity, liberalism emerged victorious over communism and fascism,
the second and third political theories. However, in victory, postmodern liberalism has morphed into
postliberalism. Ultra-materialist globalism has become a runaway train. Ordinarily, Dugin is considered in
his placement as a Russian geopolitician. I have argued that he should be regarded as a political theologian
as well. However, here I wish to offer some discourse on Dugin’s economic mindset. I do not pretend to
suggest that Dugin is in any way an economist in the same way that he is a geopolitical theologian. Still, I
do propose that his economic discourse bears attention. Fourth Political Theory seems to have a Fourth
Economic Theory companion.
Dugin was born in 1962 in Moscow to Galina Viktorovna Dugina, a medical doctor, and Gelij
Alexandrovich Dugin, a senior officer in the KGB (2018); (Shenfield, 2001). He was awarded a Ph.D. in
Sociology in 2004 (2018). Despite his rather recent appearance in the more mainstream American media,
Dugin is no overnight sensation; nor is he a one-hit-wonder. His status as a current Russian geopolitical
figure has evolved from the 1980s. The early Dugin was outwardly esoteric, even mystical, in his
expressions of the trajectory of Russian history and its projected future flight. Dugin imbues Fourth
Political Theory with Traditional characteristics of untarnished ancient Truth imported from the classic
Traditionalist, René Guénon, and the fascist-leaning, Julius Evola. Today, though remaining staunchly
conservative, traditional, and esoteric, thereby controversial, Dugin projects a more consistent and defined
image. Over time, Dugin’s Western exposure has substantially increased thanks to numerous publications
in multiple languages, especially English. Web-based blogs and sites and the ubiquitous social medium
have added to his Western recognition.

FOURTH POLITICAL THEORY

The culmination of political ideology, according to Dugin, was manifested in the three political theories
of liberalism, communism, and fascism (Dugin, Sleboda, Millerman, & Morgan, 2012); this conclusion is
evident throughout Dugin’s works). With the demise of fascism and the collapse of communism, liberalism
remained as the sole political ideology on the field. Despite the victory, Dugin claimed a situation of
ultimate irony occurred – liberalism’s victory coincided with its demise (Dugin, Sleboda, Millerman, &
Morgan, 2012). Dugin asserts that modernism, as a product of Western Liberalism, has itself fallen, and the
victor is a postmodern reality that is dominated by deconstruction and the chaos of Émile Durkheim’s
(1858-1917) notions of anomie, a state of nihilistic normlessness (Dugin, Sleboda, Millerman, & Morgan,
2012).
As a challenge to postmodern liberalism Dugin proposes his Fourth Political Theory, a still largely ill-
defined program aimed at a return to communal focused traditional values. Fourth Political Theory opposes
Western capitalism, advocates a multipolar world absent a single superpower hegemon, and contains large
esoteric and metaphysical components. Perhaps more specific in what it opposes rather than what it
proposes, Dugin stated:

we cannot ignore the bottomless measure of capitalist nihilism. The problem does not have
a technological solution: we cannot fix capitalism, it must be destroyed…This is why the
battle against capitalism is not a competition for a more efficient economic system, but a
religious, eschatological battle against death (Dugin, 2017).

Capitalism contributes to the depersonalization of the economic person, from Dugin’s Fourth Political
Theory viewpoint (Dugin, 2017). Dugin’s prediction of the result is the realization of the negatives of
Division of Labor – an economic damnation (Dugin, 2017). Work, as the sacred way of life, is turned into
merely a method of gathering material resources (Dugin, 2017).

PLATONISM, ATOMISM, AND PROGRESS

Dugin contrasts Platonism with Atomism. In modernity, Atomism, characterized by Dugin as

horizontal or linear, became the orthodox view. Atomism marginalized Platonism, which is seen by Dugin
as taking a vertical view (Dugin, 2012). Atomism, explained Dugin, is a democratic philosophy upon which
modernity is built (Dugin, 2012). Dugin believes that we can choose to be modern Atomists – materialists,
liberal democrats – or we can reject modernity (Dugin, 2012). Choosing not to be modern, we can opt to
be Platonic, understanding the present as an element of eternity and rejecting the incorrectly assumed linear
progressivism of modernity (Dugin, 2012). Being vertical, from above, events are viewed with an eternal
perspective, not limited by the obscured visibility of Atomism’s horizontal and linear world. Dugin rejects
the notion of inevitable linear progress (Dugin, Sleboda, Millerman, & Morgan, 2012). Considering
progress as a linear evolution is in keeping with the thinking of Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), and thus,
with the concept of Social Darwinism wherein the struggle for survival yields a more perfect society
(Sweet). This Darwinian process is in constant upward motion – a more perfect society is better fitted for
survival and is continuously becoming even more fit through natural selection (Dugin, Sleboda, Millerman,
& Morgan, 2012).
Dugin interprets Spencer as purporting two phases of social development. The first is the struggle
characterized by physical force (Dugin, Sleboda, Millerman, & Morgan, 2012). The second, more subtly,
is in the market arena where efficiency leads to ever-higher levels of development, and very rich and very
strong countries appear (Dugin, Sleboda, Millerman, & Morgan, 2012). Dugin looks on the West and sees
the aggression of the strong played out through universalism and globalism. The contradiction between the
aggressiveness of the strong and the triumph of the weakest elements in Western society, referred to by
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), attempts to expose the fallacy of Social Darwinism advanced by Spencer
and criticized by both Nietzsche and Dugin (Nietzsche & Levy, 1964). Dugin, referring to Oswald
Spengler’s (1880-1936) cycle of the rise and decline of civilizations, predicted that unrestrained
technology’s search for efficiency would contribute to postliberal inertia politics making course change
impossible (Dugin, Sleboda, Millerman, & Morgan, 2012). For Dugin, progress applied to modernism leads
to postmodernity, the normlessness embodied in anomie, and the characteristic destruction inherent in
nihilism (Durkheim, 1951). According to Fourth Political Theory, postmodernism's general course is first
a chaotic deconstruction of culture and society. Then the substitution of false, imitative, almost caricature-
like renditions of values, norms, and virtues. (Dugin, Sleboda, Millerman, & Morgan, 2012).

MODERNITY AND LIBERALISM

In his book, The Fourth Political Theory, Dugin wrote that the classic liberalism celebrated by Ludwig
von Mises (1881-1973), was replaced by a nihilistic theatrical façade, a liberal caricature (Dugin, Sleboda,
Millerman, & Morgan, 2012). Freedom in Europe has become a parody is how Dugin put it (Il Foglio,
2017). Dugin would agree with playwright and former Czech president, Václav Havel (1936-2011), in that
modernity is dominated by the belief that the world is a knowable system governed by physical laws that
can be rationally understood. Further, from the Enlightenment spawned Renaissance, modernity developed
towards socialism, and from positivism to scientism. Economically, this progression is also recognizable in
the path it took from the Industrial Revolution to the Information Revolution (Havel, 1992).
Dugin is no fan of Western Democracy, preferring the Platonic view. Concerning Plato’s models of the
polis – for us, the state, in Book VIII of the Republic, Plato argued that governments of monarchy,
aristocracy, and oligarchy are all superior to democracy, the lone inferior being tyranny (Cahoone, 2014).
Plato was all too aware and remained forever bitter that democracy, with a mob-like mentality, issued the
death warrant to Socrates. Subsequently, all four of the Christian New Testament Gospels serve to
underscore the danger of democratic mob-mentality – the immediate plebiscite of the majority present that
resulted in the crucifixion and death of Jesus (Matthew 27:22, NASB).
Dugin recognizes Plato’s disdain for rule-by-the-many and would almost certainly agree that
democracy is driven by unnecessary or, at worse, unlawful appetites if it becomes a tyranny of the majority.
Dugin, in sharing the Platonic anti-democratic phobia, holds the presuppositional position that the global
inclusivity of Liberal Democracy is a universal evil, not a universal good (Dugin, Sleboda, Millerman, &
Morgan, 2012). From the Fourth Political Theory vantage point, Liberal Democracy’s victory is giving way
to a postmodern hegemony of a kind of capitalistic globalization (Dugin, Sleboda, Millerman, & Morgan,
2012). In cataloging its evils, Dugin added the sexual revolution and even efforts aimed at producing clones
(Dugin). Facilitating these woes is a combination of a television advertising-style distortion of reality and
shaky financial substitutions for solid economic principles (Dugin).
Thomas Hobbes’ (1588-1697) thinking appears to accommodate Fourth Political Theory (Hobbes,
Krul, & Tromp, 2007). Concepts of the Leviathan state resonate in Dugin’s expressions of state power's
exceptionalism and his interpretation of Carl Schmitt’s (1888-1985) political theology (Schmitt, McCarthy,
& Schwab, 1985). John Locke (1632-1704) is also a significant factor in Dugin’s development. Dugin
recognized Locke’s influence and credited the power it exerted on Adam Smith (1723-1790), who,
reflecting Locke, laid the political and economic foundations of the modern epoch (Dugin, Sleboda,
Millerman, & Morgan, 2012). Locke was a believer in Natural Rights – the concept of derivative rights
from Nature and Nature’s God. In time, liberal thinkers rejected Natural Rights for a much more humanistic
political and social theory approach. This rejection may account for some of the loss of Locke’s luster with
later liberals such as John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) (Bell, 2014). Dugin, no supporter of the resulting Liberal
Democracy adapted in no small measure from Locke, none-the-less, resonates more with Locke’s derivative
elements of Natural Rights than with Mill's more humanistic views.
Dramatic changes followed the English Civil War, which was both a warning and a precursor of the
mind-bending and world-changing paradigm shifts that transpired toward the end of the eighteenth century
and throughout the nineteenth. The American Revolution, then the French, rocked the aristocratic Ancien
Régimes. Duncan Bell contended that a radical break occurred at the end of the eighteenth century (Bell,
2014). This break was a new dawning of politics and economics and left little space for Lockean political
theory (Bell, 2014). The progeny of the French Revolution and this incredible shift was Western Liberalism
(Bell, 2014). The individual rather than the cohesive community based on age-old feudal loyalties and
religion emerged triumphantly. The American Revolution was the lastborn offspring of classical liberalism.
The French Revolution was the firstborn of the Enlightenment’s humanism and modernism envisioned by
Voltaire (1694-1778) and articulated by Rousseau.
Mises admired classic liberalism but castigated its twentieth century derivative. His opinions are
expressed in the preface to the English-language edition of his book, Liberalism (Mises & Raico, 2002).
Dugin’s criticism of Western globalism's universal aims, which abandon the tenets of the nineteenth-
century philosophy of liberalism, echoes Mises, who stated that in England, liberal signifies something
remarkably like socialist totalitarianism (Mises & Raico, 2002). Mises noted that Spencer observed Western
Liberalism moving away from its classic heritage half a century earlier (Bell, 2014); (Spencer, 1969). Mises
opined that the contemporary American self-identified liberal desires an enormously powerful government,
is a foe of free enterprise, and supports strong centralized governmental planning (Mises & Raico, 2002).
While it may seem that Fourth Political Theory traditional communalism and American socialism have
much in common, this is not the case. Dugin sees American economics as exploitative governmental
controlled efforts with material unipolar globalist goals. Fourth Political Theory economics are decidedly
metaphysical and supportive of a traditional personhood that is communally focused rather than
individualistic.
In 1992 Benjamin Barber (1939-2017) wrote a well-received article, then a bestselling book, that he
styled Jihad vs. McWorld (Barber, 1995). Science and technology derived from the Enlightenment are
universalizing phenomena, Barber explained (Barber, 1995). Their impact on twentieth and twenty-first
century global economies accomplished homogenizing cultural effects more far-reaching than either formal
colonization or Mercantilism. Barber claimed that the global culture that witnesses McDonald's restaurants
across the globe and the universal ubiquities of Coca-Cola are more effective in creating a global culture
than was military backed colonization (Barber, 1995).
Mark Sedgwick pointed out that Dugin’s rejection of Western conceptions of reality had its genesis in
Dugin’s experiential impressions (Sedgwick, 2004). As Sedgwick related it, the explanation is that Dugin
believed that the Soviet reality that he grew up in was the worst imaginable (Sedgwick, 2004). But, after
Dugin made several trips to the West, he found to his surprise that the Western reality was worse still
(Sedgwick, 2004). Evident within Dugin’s rejection of Western Liberalism is his belief that it is inextricably
bound to globalism and ultimately to the West’s desire for geopolitical and cultural hegemony. In place of
Western domination, Dugin advocates a multipolar world where Eurasia represents a major pole and
maintains political assumptions that differ dramatically from those held in Western Liberalism.
Dugin perceives that the evils of Western Liberalism are embedded in mondialism, a homogeneous
projection of the world he rejects regardless of Western assurances of overarching justice and
egalitarianism. Dugin and Fourth Political Theory disciples feared that the New World Order, hailed by
George H.W. Bush, was ultimately a pretense for the hegemony of universalism tightly controlled primarily
by and for the benefit of Western elites (Dugin, 2011). Although American references to a New World
Order are seldom heard today, Fourth Political Theory adherents still hold that the U.S. led West maintains
all the despised New World Order ambitions.
At the heart of Dugin’s thinking is the belief that Western Liberalism is evil. Evident in this belief is
Dugin’s contemplation of Good and Evil, and for Dugin, this contemplation is at once a political and
theological endeavor. It is on top of profound rejection of the fruits of Western Liberalism that Dugin
constructs Fourth Political Theory. Dugin does not believe that Western Liberalism is merely less politically
desirable than Fourth Political Theory; he claims it is a geopolitical and theological expression of the
Antichrist (Dugin & Olevich, 1998). Dugin realizes that his Fourth Political Theory is an anti-Western
expression and is itself a postmodern construct – a contrary expression within the prevailing postmodern
milieu. But it is only postmodern in its temporal placement, not in its call for a return to traditional
community.

INDIVIDUALISM AND SACRAL COMMUNITY

Dugin attacks the individualism inherent in contemporary materialism, claiming it is constructed on

destruction of the true person (Dugin, 2017). This destruction rejects giving any metaphysical and moral
status to the person (Dugin, 2017). On the contrary, it is the whole person in the totality of all its diverse
component elements that makes economics a type of ontological liturgy resulting in the creation and
rejuvenation of the world, according to Dugin (Dugin, 2017). Moreover, he claims that this communal
aspect is the epitome of traditional society (Dugin, 2017).
Dugin warns of a tyranny of individualism acting outside of community as José Ortega y Gasset
suggested in his book, The Revolt of the Masses. Ortega claimed that immense freedom granted to or
assumed by the individual results in chaos as everyone becomes the source of their own law (Ortega, 1932);
(Dugin, 2012). Writing during the late 1920s and 1930s of the uncoordinated behavior of large groups
possessing excessive amounts of individual freedom, Ortega observed a hyperdemocracy where mob-like
decisions are made outside of former formal legislative practices (Ortega, 1932).
Dugin suggests that after Western Liberalism’s victory, the individual became the normative subject
(Dugin, Sleboda, Millerman, & Morgan, 2012). Dugin characterizes modernism and liberalism as carriers
of a disease that brings forth the homogenizing power of globalism and the self-indulgence of a narcissistic
individualism. Dugin sounds a warning about freedom that is grounded in the self-centered individual rather
than in community. To give freedom at the individual level is a mistake because the individual cannot
handle it properly. Freedom given to individuals is confined to the limited scope of the small amount of
each one’s direct control (Dugin, Sleboda, Millerman, & Morgan, 2012). Dugin sees a paradoxical and
inconsistent situation – liberalism spouts individual freedom but is guilty of token tolerance (Dugin,
Sleboda, Millerman, & Morgan, 2012). It is ultimately intolerant of any mindset that differs more than
marginally from its accepted dogma (Dugin, Sleboda, Millerman, & Morgan, 2012). Vladimir Moss wrote
that, in Dugin’s opinion, America refuses the right to choose values and culture to everyone else on the
planet (Moss).
Durkheim’s explanation of Division of Labor extols Western Liberalism by emphasizing the solidarity
derived from the interdependence of individualized tasks in modern society (Durkheim & Simpson, 1893).
Conversely, Durkheim’s interpretation of anomie provides much fodder for Dugin to use in his critique of
modernity. Criminologist Cecil L. Willis’ study of solidarity and anomie provides insight with an eye to
Dugin’s interpretation of these two Durkheim insights (Willis, 1982). Willis stated that Durkheim believed
that ineffective constraints on individual desires constitute a threat to social solidarity (Willis, 1982).
Despite Durkheim’s opinion that Division of Labor may produce solidarity among societal members,
solidarity is not a guaranteed result. There is a real danger of Division of Labor creating a very detrimental
effect. Anomie is a real downside risk encountered in Division of Labor when differentiation results in an
unequal social order, class conflict, or greater social distance among the diverse functions (Willis, 1982).
Western Democracy advocates argue that Division of Labor, with its individualist reinforcements, enhances
societal solidarity. Dugin insists that the compound conditions necessary for successful Division of Labor
are too elusive and that anomie is too often the end-product of Durkheim’s individual-centered model.
Considered in tandem with Durkheim, Ferdinand Tönnies (1855-1936) provided insightful resources
into the depth of Dugin’s Fourth Political Theory constructions. Tönnies’ influential and seminal
Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft – Community and Society – originally published in 1887, explored the
conflicts between modern and traditional communities and suggested that acceptance of modernity results
in the subsequent loss of the essence of traditional community (Harris, 2001); (Tönnies, Harris, & Hollis,
2001). In Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft Tönnies proposed that Gesellschaft, society, (modern society, in
this case), had achieved superiority by its wider acceptance over Gemeinschaft, the traditional sense of
community. Tönnies also related that it is Wesenwille, the essential will of the individual emanating from
community, that imparts a cohesive morality so necessary for harmonious community existence. (Harris,
2001); (Tönnies, Harris, & Hollis, 2001). With the elevation of individual choice over the community's
collective will, it is the community that suffers, for it is within community that proper individual identity is
developed (Harris, 2001).
Max Weber (1864-1920) considered the trend of replacing tradition through a rational process of self-
control (Weber, Gerth, Mills, Gerth, & Mills, 1946). He acknowledged the continuing theme of modernity
wherein the individual is elevated over the community's traditional societal elements. In his 1918 lecture,
“Science as a Vocation,” Weber spoke of an ascension of empirical separation of facts overcoming the
judgment of values (Weber, Gerth, Mills, Gerth, & Mills, 1946a). Weber believed that life aims or ends
compete in modernity, thereby requiring individual choice (Weber, Gerth, Mills, Gerth, & Mills, 1946).
The strength of individual choice and competition of aims and ends is unavoidable; adoption of an all-
encompassing religious view would be required to change this paradigm (Weber, Gerth, Mills, Gerth, &
Mills, 1946). Progress, although some assume that it provides meaning, may tend to undermine meaning,
given Weber’s explanation (Weber, Gerth, Mills, Gerth, & Mills, 1946a).
According to Stephen Kalberg, Weber believed that some traditional traces remained even after the
rational tsunami of the Enlightenment (Kalberg, 1980). To these traditional remnant elements Weber
appears to have traced much of the angst of modernity, resulting from inadequate industrial society
substitutions able to replace religion (Kalberg, 1980). Failure to completely replace religion’s traditional
elements left remnants that remained in conflict with their various Division of Labor substitutions. Owing
to a means justified by the result worldview, Kalberg read Weber as foreseeing modernity risking
authoritarian rule (Kalberg, 1980).
Dugin claims that liberalism promises freedom but only insomuch as it conforms with the prevailing
liberal dogma (Dugin, Sleboda, Millerman, & Morgan, 2012). Dugin detects hypocrisy in this prevailing
dogma. Despite its promises of individual freedom, there is a demand for conformity. For Dugin, triumphant
liberalism is a lifestyle of consumerism and individualism (Dugin, Sleboda, Millerman, & Morgan, 2012).
Even though liberalism is still touted as modernist orthodoxy, in reality, with its victory over fascism and
communism, the postmodern era began (Dugin, Sleboda, Millerman, & Morgan, 2012). Liberalism’s
victory was pyrrhic. Even as Liberal Democracy has attempted to devour all in its path, the deconstructionist
elements inherent in postmodernity have been simultaneously dismantling many liberal accomplishments.
Dugin posits that modernity sowed the seeds of its own decline, saying that modernity yielded to
postmodernity, and postmodernity, characterized by its deconstructive tendencies, will eventually
deconstruct itself (Dugin, Sleboda, Millerman, & Morgan, 2012).
Dugin denounced Francis Fukuyama’s proclamation of the End of History (Dugin, 2012); (Fukuyama,
1992). With political history at an end, the world was to have achieved a global marketplace and witnessed
the demise of competing political ideologies. As Dugin’s perception of Western reality grew, he concluded
that it could culminate in the New World Order, the fruit of Fukuyama's premature, much-ballyhooed, then
backed-away-from, End of History. All this Dugin continues to reject out-of-hand – first as undesirable,
then as a contradiction of experiential reality.
Dugin accuses the materialism of the West as being a false religion where super-technology supplants
the supernatural. This materialism elevates scientism into the realm of authentic religion by identifying
paradise with material comfort and technological progress, trusting in the seemingly magical ability of
evolutionary humanism to solve all problems (Epstein, 1994). Dugin suggests that the positives of
communism include anti-capitalist, anti-liberal, anti-cosmopolitan, and anti-individualist elements (Dugin,
Sleboda, Millerman, & Morgan, 2012). But, allowing that even communism was stained by materialism
and cosmopolitanism, Dugin insists that merely recycling communism will not do; these taints plus the
considerable stumbling block of atheism eliminate communism from contention for resurrection (Dugin,
Sleboda, Millerman, & Morgan, 2012). As for fascism, Dugin rejects it as well – condemning it at the same
time he does Western Liberalism, mentioning racism, xenophobia, and chauvinism among its unacceptable
elements (Dugin, Sleboda, Millerman, & Morgan, 2012).

EXAMPLES OF DUGIN’S OVERT ESOTERICISM

There are myriad examples of Dugin’s esoteric mindset and how he incorporates it into standard
mainstream dialog. Consider his writing on “The problematic ontology of turbo-capitalism.” In his 2001
article entitled “The Evaporation of Fundamentals in the ‘New Economy,’” Dugin unhesitatingly inserts
recognizable Traditional allusions and illustrations into his discourse on any number of subject areas he is
discussing – in this case, economics (Dugin & Conserva, 2001). Dugin, writing on what he styled Turbo-
Capitalism, addressed the move from an economy based on exchanges in material things to a “new
economy” based on “contemplation and sensorial stimulation” (Dugin & Conserva, 2001). He
characterized the move as one where the essential element is no longer mere possession, but one where
there is a proliferation of narcotics, television networks, and computer games (Dugin & Conserva, 2001).
Then, Dugin abruptly made a leap into the esoteric by revealing that Guénon would place the present
condition in correspondence with an opening of the cosmic egg from below. Dugin states that during the
epoch of the traditional societies, the cosmic egg was opened from above, and later, it was closed from all
sides (Dugin & Conserva, 2001).
The cosmic egg, Dugin’s Egg of the World in his 2011 Paris lecture, refers to the representation of
the creation of the world (or the cosmos) in the creation narratives of various sacred and esoteric texts
(Dugin, 2017). Modern society corresponded to the Egg of the World closed at the top and the bottom,
Dugin explained (Dugin, 2017). He went on to say that materialistic, atheistic, consumerist civilization
corresponds to the cosmic egg, closed at both ends, the scientific and atomistic worldview. Worse, Dugin
insinuated, the cosmic egg is now open at the bottom and closed at the top (Dugin, 2017).
Perhaps a bit more understandable to those not adept in Traditionalist thought is Dugin’s example of
the serpent. Described in Genesis is Satan in the role of the Deceiver. Satan possesses an inherent dualism
– he is angelic yet demonic. Though he is no longer an angel of light in his fallen state, he attempts to
appear so (2 Corinthians 11:14, NASB). He is not of this world, yet he is its prince for a time. It is the
appearance of goodness that camouflages the Deceiver’s evil. The more truth the Dark Serpent can mix
with his lies, the more like an angel of light he appears to be.
A much more mundane symbol is that of the mole. Not eliciting the same degree of visceral
repugnance as does the snake, the mole is seemingly cast poorly and out-of-character as an evil and
sinister actor on the world stage. Dugin related that Marx identified the mole as a symbol of capitalism
(Dugin & Bogdanov). For a time, the mole dominated the economic stage, but the mole's time has passed.
Dugin claimed that French philosopher, Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995), was correct in saying that we have
now come to the time of the serpent (Dugin & Bogdanov). It is not that the serpent replaced the mole,
capitalism replaced by an entirely different ideology. Instead, the mole has morphed into the snake. We
have passed on to societies that control, and the serpent symbolizes capitalism gone extreme (Deleuze,
1992). American society is constructed according to serpent principles (Dugin & Bogdanov).
Dugin recalled the Copper Serpent, the serpent on a cross found in Orthodox churches. This other
serpent, the not-Satan serpent, the Copper Serpent, was erected in the desert by Moses (Dugin &
Bogdanov). The Copper Serpent, recognized by Dugin as a Serpent of Light, which Traditionalists
believe will defeat the Dark Serpent’s capitalism in the West (Dugin & Bogdanov). Dugin believes that
the Serpent of Light will emerge victorious in its struggles against the Dark Serpent – triumphant
Traditionalism overcoming postmodernity.
 These examples are not intended to examine the validity of Dugin’s economic ideas and observations
but to emphasize the rapid change of direction he demonstrates in his otherwise economic discourse.
Dugin moved from the economics of material accumulation to the cosmic egg without missing a beat.
These deviations from a dialog that is understood, or at least that engages with familiar words and
phrases, to the esoteric realm of mystical symbolism are likely disconcerting to most Western audiences.
For Dugin, such leaps are commonplace and show the esoteric bend of his Traditionalist adaptations.

CONCLUSIONS

Dugin condemns capitalism as an economic activity aimed at individual self-enrichment, an imbalance

in the proper cosmic structure's sacral element. Dugin watchers are alert to signs of the extent of Russian
policy reflecting Fourth Political Theory ideology. Dugin’s geopolitical thinking, political theology, and
economic understanding are relative to international relations where unipolar and multipolar desires
translate into competition. Even partially grounded in Dugin inspired Fourth Political Theory ideas, a
Russia with major power aspirations demands attention from those concerned with National Security and
those seeking geopolitical understanding.
Dugin consistently applies metaphysical elements in his geopolitical expositions. His political thinking
bears Schmitt’s political theology imprint, and his economic discourse is peppered with decidedly esoteric
allusions and illustrations. In short, Dugin presents sharp contrasts to the accepted mainstream of the
Western forum. None-the-less, he should not be lightly dismissed.
Charles Clover pointed out that when Dugin wrote Foundations of Geopolitics, a text mainly used by
Russian military and foreign policy officers, an inspired Eurasian trajectory in Russian policy did not seem
to matter (Clover, 2014). Clover reported that, at the time, the GDP of the Netherlands exceeded that of
Russia. The once-formidable Red Army had been defeated on the battlefield and forced into a humiliating
peace by Chechen insurgents (Clover, 2014). Clover was right. It did not matter so much in 1997. However,
in light of Russian resurgence, it matters now.

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John Cody Mosbey

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